


the very best something

by kirkaut



Category: Kingsman (Movies), Winnie-the-Pooh - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M, yes you read all of those tags right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 02:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15572112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirkaut/pseuds/kirkaut
Summary: “Lots of kids your age nearby, then?” he asks. “Seems to me your neighbors are ages away. Must’ve gotten a lot of use out of this thing.” He nudges the bicycle gently with his toe.Harry can’t help but chuckle. “Oh, I had friends,” he concedes, and lets his good eye drift shut in a long, wistful blink. “Only they weren’t exactly my age, and they definitely weren’t children.”[or: the Kingsman/Winnie the Pooh crossover absolutely no one was asking for]





	the very best something

**Author's Note:**

> this is one of the most ridiculous things i've ever written but i just saw Christopher Robin and i'm so here for it, you don't even know
> 
> the original winnie the pooh took place WAY before harry hart would have been a child but do you think i care? no.

Just shy of his twenty-second birthday, on a balmy day in late September, he joined the army.

This proved to be the catalyst for a great many things—the discovery of his affinity for sharpshooting, the honing of his tactical mind, the development of a very special skills set that would one day land him at Kingsman’s door and in the waiting arms of Galahad’s chair—but most importantly of all, it signified the end of the boy he used to be.

With the ink of his signature still drying on the paper, he became Harry Hart.

It’s been over thirty years since that fateful day; thirty one years, nine months, and twelve days, to be precise. Harry’s seen a lot of things since then. Some wonderful things, some good, but an awful lot of horrible, terrible things that he’s taken in stride for the sake of Queen and country.

He’s made friends and lost them to bullets, to car crashes, to heart disease, and the ever-memorable bisection by prosthetic blades. He’s seen the disastrous impact of war on villages, on cities, on the good people around him. He’s watched a devoted, loving father dive onto a live grenade and sacrifice his own life in order to save the lives of three near-strangers. He’s had to look at himself in the mirror on the wall in a tiny flat while a heartbroken woman and a somber little boy were left behind him.

He’s lost a year of his life to a smoking gun and the hot summer asphalt rising up to meet him, pain searing through his head before the world went dark. Had to witness the wreckage his perceived death left behind, had to watch footage of a man he’d known for nearly his entire life—who had sponsored him for Kingsman in the first place—choose his own wellbeing over the fate of millions of people.

Terrible things, yes, but he’s also found a great deal. Harry’s had Mr. Pickle, taken comfort in the wiry touch of his fur and the preserved kindness in his gaze that greets him every time he passes the open door to the loo. He’s found one of the greatest men he’s ever known and a damn good friend at that in Merlin, ornery bastard though he may be.

And he’s found Eggsy.

Sweet, beautiful, loyal Eggsy, who’s been nothing but patient and kind with Harry as he settles back into life in the Mews and oversees all that’s to be done in the newly rebuilt tailor shop. Eggsy, who comes around with a cup of tea whenever Harry needs it most, a headache pressing at his temples, and is content to sip his own and keep silent company in the armchair by the fireplace at their makeshift HQ.

It’s a ways to travel, leading to odd stretches of time alternating between London and Sussex, but nearly dying has given Harry both a new lease and a new outlook on life, and he finds the sprawling forest a comfort every time the cab turns onto the lane.

It’s been a long time since Harry’s been in the large cottage that he called home as a boy, but it’s been well kept by a staff Harry’s been careful to employ over the years. A few renovations have been done here and there to keep up with the times, but even so there’s a touch of nostalgia around every corner, under every creaking floorboard, in the rustle of the trees.

Harry goes for a walk in the garden one day when he thinks he might go mad from all the paperwork, and comes across a rusted bike and wagon that’s draped heavily in vine, but that’s so familiar he’s arrested in his tracks at the sight of it. He reaches out and runs fingers over the handlebars, and imagines hearing laughter in the wind.

There’s the crunch of footsteps behind him, and Harry wonders how sad of a state he is that he can recognize Eggsy unseen by gait alone.

“You fancy going for a ride?” he teases as he comes to a stop beside Harry and nods towards the decrepit little bicycle. “Might need new tires, man.”

Harry hums and untangles a few vines from around the bike’s frame. “It was mine, as a child,” he admits, thumbing at the bell. The switch grates, sticking on the rust, and doesn’t chime.

“Can’t imagine you as a kid,” Eggsy says, crossing over to lean against the brick wall where the bike is parked, and looks down at the sorry thing. “Was you always so serious?”

The corners of Harry’s mouth twitch up. “Oh, no,” he says, and curls his fingers over the handlebar, stooping down to do so. “Before boarding school, and before my father died, I’m afraid I had a great deal of fun.”

Eggsy smiles at that like he’s glad to hear it, like he truly did believe Harry to be a somber little boy and is happy to be proven wrong. “Lots of kids your age nearby, then?” he asks. “Seems to me your neighbors are ages away. Must’ve gotten a lot of use out of this thing.” He nudges the bicycle gently with his toe.

Harry can’t help but chuckle. “Oh, I had friends,” he concedes, and lets his good eye drift shut in a long, wistful blink. “Only they weren’t exactly my age, and they definitely weren’t children.”

Eggsy looks confused, and as much as Harry would love to elaborate, he’s at a loss as to _how._

Because a long time ago—before Kingsman, before the army, and before being sent away to Stowe—there was a little boy who used to run around this forest. Before the bespoke suits and weaponized umbrellas and megalomaniacs who wanted to watch the world burn, there was just a boy with muddy knees and skinned palms, who smiled brightly whenever he went to visit with his friends, and who could always find the right knot on the great big pine tree.

Before he became Harry Hart, there was a boy named Christopher Robin.

 

 

**ooo**

 

 

Prior to being shot in the head, Harry would have said that he was quite content with the state of his life, thank you very much. The life of a spy didn’t allow for too many long-lasting attachments, so it could be a hair lonely at times, but Harry had his hobbies and his butterflies and his job, which he was damn good at and had the added benefit of taking him to some of the most unusual places around the world.

Then a phone call had come into the shop one day, a harangued sounding voice imploring for help from the holding cell at a police station, and life as Harry had known it went spectacularly tits up.

He’s added on a few years since then, lost an eye and (temporarily) his memory, and even managed to shed a stone, as well. But sometimes he looks around the room he’s turned into his office, or finds himself losing focus as he attempts to read a mission report, and thinks he may have lost something else, as well.

He’d been content with the relative tedium of life before the world went mad, but now the thought of being trapped at a desk, of being caught in a life that was nothing but work and hardly any play, seemed…abhorrent.

When he was a child, he and his friends had a name for things that took the fun away.

“Woozle,” he mutters to himself as he signs an expense report and sets it aside. Another form requiring his signature lay beneath it. “Heffalump.”

“You say something?” Eggsy asks from his seat across the room. He’s looking at Harry with a furrowed brow, the same way he does when he’s worried that Harry’s still seeing butterflies floating all around him. On anyone else, that look would be an irritation, but Harry finds it annoyingly endearing instead. Harry takes a moment to look at Eggsy, who’s sitting at a table he’s commandeered into his own makeshift desk, complete with a laptop and printer and a filing system of his own.

He’s not wearing his jacket or his tie, the top few buttons of his shirt undone and his sleeves un-cuffed and rolled neatly to the elbows. He had a habit of running his hand through his hair while he’s sorting through their digital files and installing firm security blocks wherever he suspects there may be a vulnerability (much to Merlin’s vexation and wounded pride), so his hair has broken free of its gel and begun to fall across his forehead.

He’s so beautiful, and Harry loves him so very, very much, but Eggsy deserves better than a broken man on the wrong side of fifty, and so he’ll never say a word.

Heartache is bitter on the back of his tongue, and he tries to swallow it back with a gulp of tepid tea. “I think I may go for a walk,” he says, pushing his chair out from the desk and standing. He doesn’t bother reaching for his own coat—he hardly needs the protection out here, relatively secluded as they are.

“Want me to come with?” Eggsy asks, body language telegraphing that he’s already willing to join Harry at a moment’s notice.

“No need,” Harry refuses, though it aches a bit to do so. Eggsy looks disappointed, which twinges as well. “Just going to take a quick stroll around the garden. Stretch my legs. Shan’t be gone long.”

“Yeah, alright,” Eggsy mutters, and turns back to the task at hand, shoulders slumped and altogether looking put out.

Harry bites back the sad smile until he’s turned away from Eggsy and nearly in the other room.

It’s a warm, lovely day outside, more blue sky than not, and despite what he said to Eggsy, Harry has no pre-conceived path in mind or any idea of how long he’s willing to wander until his heart settles down. He finds himself following a familiar gravel path, the one that leads him around the vegetable patches and through the small brick archway where his old bicycle still stands, a decrepit testament to his youth.

He walks along the path, stones crunching beneath his Oxfords as his feet take him to the small tennis court where he and mother used to play. Now, the court beneath his feet is a freshly painted and bright green concrete. When he was younger, he remembers the floor being little more than dirt with small patches of grass, and their games of tennis slower for it.

Harry settles himself into the bench on the sidelines and leans forward, elbows on his knees, and thinks about Eggsy. About how dreadfully he adores him, but can’t do anything about it.

The wind rustles the branches and the fallen leaves behind him.

“What to do,” he mutters, and pulls his glasses off, tucking them into his shirt pocket, and rubs a hand across his brow. The shuffle of the woods continues behind him, the only noise outside of Harry’s own thoughts. A tear of frustration slips from his right eye, wetting the knee of his trousers. “What to do?”

When the touch comes, he starts and jerks away, gaze shooting to the right and—down?

A small face peers up at him, a soft and faded yellow around two black eyes and a little mouth that turns up into a smile. Harry can’t _breathe_.

The felted paw reaches out again and makes contact with Harry’s cheek, the fabric—fur?—absorbing the tear he’s shed. “There, there, Christopher,” says Winnie the Pooh, and _oh_ , his voice is as gentle and soothing and beloved as ever. “Do you need a balloon?”

“Pooh,” Harry says, voice strangled. “My God, you’re…you’re here? What are you…why aren’t you in the Hundred Acre Wood?”

Pooh shrugs one shoulder and reaches up with his other arm to pat both paws against Harry’s face. “Why, because I’m here, of course.”

“But _what_ are you doing here?” Harry presses, heart hammering in his chest. It’s been over forty years since he last laid eyes on his first and greatest friend, and he feels almost like that boy in the muddy shorts once more.

“Talking,” Pooh says serenely. “Seeing. Patting.” He taps Harry’s cheeks twice. “Pat, pat.”

Despite the disbelief flooding his entire system, Harry cracks a grin. “Silly old bear,” he says, and his voice trembles. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”

Pooh hums and continues peering up at him with those black eyes that are somehow both vacant and full of wonder. “I was hungry this morning,” he tells Harry like it’s an answer to his question. “And then I wasn’t, but now I’m hungry again. Do you have any honey?” he asks hopefully.

Harry laughs, and reaches out with a shaking hand to rub at Pooh’s ear with his index finger and thumb. “It’s been a while since I carried honey with me, Pooh,” he murmurs, and strokes an apologetic path across the top of the bear’s head when he lets out a disappointed sigh. “We may have some back at the house, but…Pooh, what are you doing out here? I’ve never seen you leave the Hundred Acre Wood before.”

Pooh’s arms fall from his face only long enough for the round little creature to heave himself up onto Harry’s lap, wind-milling for balance as he struggles to find his footing on top of Harry’s knees. Harry reaches out and carefully grabs him ‘round the tummy, hands fitting in against the red of his knitted sweater.

He remembers Pooh being so much _larger_ —or perhaps, more accurately, himself so much smaller.

“Sometimes I wait for Somewhere to come to me,” Pooh says, still shifting his weight even as Harry holds onto him. “It usually finds me.”

“And Somewhere brought you here,” Harry finishes slowly, but Pooh shakes his head.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come back, Christopher Robin,” he says, and pats at Harry’s wrists with his paws. “But the Somewhere thought maybe I should come to you.” He looks up at the world around them, at the trees and towards the sky. “A sunny day,” he says happily. “It’s always a sunny day when Christopher Robin comes to play.”

Harry wonders, guiltily, how many sunny days Pooh has seen since he walked away from the Hundred Acre Wood for the last time.

“I have missed you,” he confides, and squeezes Pooh ever-so-slightly until the bear squirms, tickled.

“I’ve missed you,” Pooh echoes. He then points up towards Harry’s face. “And you’re missing an eye. Have you misplaced it? Perhaps you should get a tack, like Eeyore has for his tail.”

Harry starts at the reminder of his eye on show, and lets go of Pooh long enough that he can put his glasses back on, the darkened lens hiding his scar from the world. Pooh wobbles forward and stumbles into Harry’s chest with a wobbly, “Oh, dear.”

The top of his head barely brushes against Harry’s chin, and he smells of haycorns and honey and pine, and everything about Harry’s childhood that he thought he’d long since left behind.

There’ve been times over the years where he’d chalked up all his time with Pooh and Piglet and Tigger and the rest as the vivid imagination of a child, but it had never stuck. Everything he’d done, everything he’d seen, and how fervently he’d loved his friends had all been too much to be anything but real.

“Would you like to come and play in the Wood?” Pooh asks, grabbing at Harry’s face once more. “Everyone will be so happy.”

Harry is tempted, so sorely tempted, but he hesitates. “I’m not the Christopher Robin you all remember, Pooh,” he tells him gently. “I’m older, a bit scarier.”

“Perhaps,” Pooh acquiesces. “Older, but Christopher Robin all the same. And nothing’s scarier than,” his voice drops to a whisper, “a _Heffalump_ or a _Woozle._ ”

Harry thinks back on the soul-sucking amount of paperwork waiting for him on his desk, of the weight of the agency that’s sitting on his shoulders, all the decisions waiting for him to cross his T’s and dot his I’s, and wonders if there isn’t something to that. He finds abruptly that he yearns for the simplicity of the Hundred Acre Wood, that he wants to find the Good and the Kind of the world all over again.

More than that, he wants to see his friends.

He opens his mouth, ready to let Pooh know of his decision, when he hears the crunch of gravel all too late. He turns his head to the side in time to watch Eggsy step down the stairs and into the tennis court, looking for all the world like a man with a mission.

“I know you said you wanted to be alone,” Eggsy says in a rush, like he’s been practicing the words and he needs to get them out. “But we need to have a talk, bruv, and—you’re holding a teddy bear.” He stops in his tracks, eyebrows shooting into his hairline.

“I’m not Teddy,” says the aforementioned bear before Harry can stop him, sounding confused. “I’m Pooh.”

Eggsy’s eyebrows raise impossibly further. “Did…did that bear just fucking _talk?_ ”

Pooh gasps and shrinks down, hiding his face into Harry’s shoulder, frantically whispering, _“He said a Woozle Word!”_

Harry clears his throat, helpless to do anything else. “If you wouldn’t mind, ah, refraining from swearing in front of…in front of Pooh, we would both greatly appreciate it.”

Even under what must be massive amounts of confusion, Eggsy must be able to see that he’s frightened Pooh, because he takes slow and careful steps the rest of the way towards the both of them until he comes to a crouch in front of them.

“Hey,” he murmurs, keeping his voice soft and low. “Hey, I’m sorry. Pooh, was it? I didn’t mean nothing by it, bruv. I was just…surprised.”

Pooh stops trembling and takes a cautious peek back towards Eggsy. “A surprise?” he repeats. “Surprises are good things.” He looks up towards Harry, innocent and imploring. “Am I a good thing?”

Harry smiles down at him, soft and open. He hears Eggsy take in a sharp breath at the sight of it. “The very best, you silly old bear.”

Pooh makes a happy noise, and turns his attention back to Eggsy. “Is _he_ a good thing?” he stage whispers to Harry.

Harry swallows, and forces himself to meet Eggsy’s gaze. “A very good thing,” he admits, and feels his heart thrum in his chest at the way it makes Eggsy’s face break open into a beatific grin.

“All things have a name,” Pooh informs them sagely, breaking into the moment without a second thought. “Especially the very good ones. What’s yours?”

Eggsy tears his eyes away from Harry long enough that he can look at Pooh as he extends a hand in greeting. “Gary Unwin, at your service,” he says. “But you can call me Eggsy.”

“Eggy,” Pooh says, and sets his paw into Eggsy’s hand, and they carefully shake in hello. Eggsy doesn’t correct him on the mispronunciation, which is truly a testament to how endearing Pooh really is. “I’m Winnie the Pooh. Pooh for short.” He totters off of Harry’s lap and stands on the curved seat of the bench, looking between them both. “Do you suppose Eggy would like to come and play with us?” he asks Harry. “We’d all love a new friend. We can have a party!” He turns back to Eggsy with a hopeful look. “Do you perhaps have any honey?”

Eggsy looks hopelessly confused when he says, “No?” and Harry laughs.

He pushes himself up onto his feet and holds a hand out and down for Eggsy to take, so that Harry can help lever him back onto his feet. His palm is warm against Harry’s own, calloused and firm as he grips Harry’s hand with the surety of someone who doesn’t plan on letting go any time soon. Harry finds it’s impossible to resist rubbing his thumb against one of the dark bags under Eggsy’s eyes that speak of his own exhaustion. “How long has it been,” he asks in a low voice. “Since you’ve done Nothing?”

Eggsy’s mouth curves up. “’S been a while,” he admits.

“Do you remember those friends I told you about?” Harry asks, and turns around to see Pooh already waddling towards the graveled staircase, no doubt leading them to the tree that serves as the entrance to the Hundred Acre Wood. Eggsy nods. “Would you like to meet them? They’re very good at doing Nothing.”

“I love doing Nothing,” Pooh calls back to them as he slowly meanders up the path. “I do Nothing every day, and Nothing always leads to Something.”

Eggsy laughs, breathless and disbelieving, but his eyes are fond and sparkling as he looks from Harry to Pooh Bear and back. “Yeah,” he says, and squeezes Harry’s hand. “I’d love to. But…where are we going, exactly?”

“Somewhere,” Harry says, and squeezes back. “Which is my very favorite place to be.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
